Watch & Learn: Timefigure analysis from Graeme North

With the two-and-a-bit-week gap between the Derby and Royal Ascot being a quiet one again this season, now is an appropriate time to assess the current crop of juveniles with the Royal meeting very nearly upon us (there won’t be a Watch And Learn column next week as I’ll be writing a daily Ascot timefigure piece with the intent of unearthing a few winners from a timing perspective).

Incorporation of sectional information has meant time analysis has come a long way in recent years but that doesn’t take away from the fact that fast two-year-old timefigures on their own with or without sectional upgrades recorded before Royal Ascot are a powerful predictor of success at the Royal meeting almost to the extent that juveniles who can post a timefigure of 95 or higher on their debuts are almost worth backing blind if turning up at Ascot.

In 2022, for example, among the seven two-year-olds who achieved that level on their racecourse debuts in either Britain or Ireland, Dramatised went on to win the Queen Mary at 5/2, Bradsell took the Coventry at 8/1, in doing so beating another of the septet Persian Force (3/1) into second place, while Little Big Bear landed the Windsor Castle at 6/5.

So far this season, just six youngsters have managed that feat. They are led, of course, by Asadna whose 109 timefigure at Ripon is the highest recorded by a debut two-year-old this century. That figure is freakishly high for Ripon where promising sorts usually record timefigures in the high 80s but isn’t without precedent as, in another example of just how forwardly predictive timefigures can be wherever they are recorded, the only other youngster this century to have achieved post three figures on his debut at Ripon is A’Ali who on his next start won the Norfolk Stakes in 2019 at odds of 5/1.

Nothing old hat about this then. Readers may well want to pay heed to the names of the remaining five who make up the ‘debut Class of 2023’.

First up is Navassa Island (99) who was one of the fastest breezers at the Craven meeting and pushed the more-experienced Porta Fortuna close in a Group 3 at Naas last month; he’s followed by River Tiber (98) who looked one of the best juveniles seen out so far when maintaining his unbeaten record, again at Naas, last time out; then come Barnwell Boy (97) who was a wide-margin winner at Goodwood and Persian Dreamer (96) who won nicely at Newmarket first time out but then got turned over under much faster conditions at York.

Now we get to the only filly in the group, Carla’s Way (95) who was still full of running at the line despite pulling like a train at Doncaster and, bearing in mind that timefigure was a cautious one given the six-and-a-half furlong trip is not a distance much used at Doncaster, she looks a likely one for the Albany Stakes.

The week just gone saw a couple of significant two-year-old performances on the clock and it may well be that the two horses who posted those figures will be seen at Royal Ascot.

Better of them was the 96 recorded by Thunder Blue at Goodwood. An unlucky runner-up on his debut at Haydock behind a horse who had been awarded a large P by Timeform his debut and whose subsequent run in the Woodcote Stakes at Epsom can be ignored, Thunder Blue wasn’t by any means fully pushed out at Goodwood and would seem on the face of things to be a leading contender for the Coventry.

That said, his supporters of whom there are likely to be plenty will be wanting to see him eke out another 10lb or so improvement and whether that manifests itself remains to be seen as of the four two-year-olds that owners Amo Racing have run this season who have run at least three times, none has shown any improvement after their second start and two of them have gone backwards.

The other performance of note was posted by Midnight Affair in the Hilary Needler at Beverley, a race that much like the Lily Agnes a few weeks previously is no longer the race of significance it once was. All the same, a 91 timefigure is the third best in the race since 2010 after the 95 posted by Easton Angel in 2015 and 93 by Liberty Beach in 2019 and given that those fillies went on to finish second and fourth respectively in large fields for the Queen Mary then Midnight Affair, who may well have won at Newmarket on her debut had she had anything like the clear run the winner Soprano had, will have to command a deal of respect if she turns up there.

Another filly who won last week and might be Queen Mary bound is Beautiful Diamond who is a stablemate of Dramatised. A three-and-a-half length win at Nottingham with another four-and-a-quarter back to the third was not unexpected given the impression she had created at the Goffs Breeze-Up Sale, where I have it on good authority that she was the fastest breezer of all, and the time she posted there translates to an likely performance rating of 108 according to a Breeze Up model I’ve developed.

She didn’t reach that level on the clock, her timefigure coming in at 86, but a 9lb upgrade takes her overall time rating to 95 and given what she showed at Goffs I don’t doubt even that figure seriously underestimates her ability.

Pick of the rest of last week's action

Another performance that was extremely impressive visually last week but which didn’t pull up any trees on the clock was Al Asifah’s win in the listed Agnes Keyser Fillies’ Stakes at Goodwood, a race that was previously known as the Abingdon Stakes and run at Newbury. An impressive winner on her debut at Haydock in a race that also wasn’t strongly run, Al Asifah hasn’t beaten anything of particular note so far but could hardly have done it in better style both times, mindful that a couple of her rivals at Goodwood might have been feeling the fast ground.

A 12lb sectional upgrade elevates her base modest 76 time rating to an overall one of 88 but sectional upgrades are of little use when the horse wins on the bridle as she did with her rider sitting motionless and, though clearly very promising, from a timefigure perspective she’s extremely hard to pin down.

There were just two Group races run domestically last week and neither produced good timefigures with Sea Silk Road landing the Sky Bet Lester Piggott Stakes (formerly known as the Pinnacle) in 98 and Jumby landing the John of Gaunt in an even lower 80.

Neither race was well run, and the form of both looks muddling, not least the John of Gaunt where the fourth horse home seemed to run well above himself. It wasn’t a vintage week on the clock in listed company last week either, with just one of the six races carrying that status in Britain or Ireland, the Achilles Stakes, sneaking into three figures.

All the same, a 15lb upgrade adds a fair amount of lustre to a base 106 timefigure for the winner Regional, taking his overall time rating to 121, and this improved performer (unbeaten in both starts this season) shouldn’t be underestimated when he makes the step up to Group company. The only other notable time performance in those listed races came from Moon De Vega who recorded a 95 in the Glencairn Stakes at Leopardstown, so making it 2-2 since leaving Ralph Beckett.

Sectional timing rolled out in Ireland

Mention of Leopardstown reminds me that last week saw finally saw the long-awaited roll-out of sectional timing in Ireland which had been promised as long ago as 2017 with Leopardstown’s Thursday meeting being the first with official sectional timing after the course had been surveyed and remeasured using the technology used when the same operation was undertaken in Britain several years ago.

Sectional timing has helped advance race and time analysis since it was made widely available several years ago in Britain, long after it has been part and parcel of more forward-thinking jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and North America, and it’s good Ireland has finally come in from the cold after Leopardstown’s meeting on May 19 raised serious questions about the accuracy of the race distances that day.

Timeform have been returning Flat timefigures from Ireland since 2015 and over the sticks since 2016 but only for those courses where the historical data stored on our vast internal database was reliable enough to compute credible standards.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case at every track but hopefully this new initiative will allow those racecourses that aren’t covered currently – such as Tramore and Thurles which both host important races over jumps, for example – to join the party eventually.

In a nutshell, it seems race distances in Ireland were previously measured from the winning line backwards using a wheel which apparently added as much as 60 metres to a circuit as big as Leopardstown, for example, with the start moved to accommodate the race distance (assuming that spot was suitable for a start) rather than the other way round as is the case in the UK where the tracks have fixed start positions.

What that means is that unlike what happened domestically, where information on changes to start positions were made public, allowing for easy recalculation of standard times, changes to existing standard times will have to be estimated and monitored going forwards with suggestions that existing race distances have been out by somewhere between three and four metres per furlong. All in all good news then, but the modus operandi with regards to returning timefigures in Ireland is, as before, to continue to tread carefully.

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